On: Unnecessary medical care is harming patients physically and financially

[mmastrac]

That's an absolutely ridiculous statement. As a Canadian myself, we are constantly seeing the struggle to reduce the cost of providing health care as a proportion of the taxes we pay.

I don't know where this myth comes from -- is it just a misunderstanding of how public health care works, assuming that it's an infinite money pit?

[Frondo → mmastrac]

It comes from buying into the anti-government propaganda that the hard right has been pumping out for decades.

Once you buy into that, you start applying that faulty reasoning to the real world, and you come up with afactual claims like the original poster did.

[emodendroket → mmastrac]

It comes from motivated reasoning.

[ams6110 → mmastrac]

Medicare has an incentive to keep prices low, which is demonstrated by the fact that in many (most?) cases it reimburses providers at less than their cost.

Perversely, it also raises costs by increasing demand for medical care.